A Good Year’s Work

By William B. McAllisterOffice of the Historian, U.S. Department of State

Released February 8, 2012

As you can see from our FRUS
sesquicentennial page, we have had a busy year, producing online
postings, podcasts, articles, conferences, presentations at academic sessions,
and public addresses. We invite you to peruse our discoveries and conclusions
about the history of the Foreign Relations of the United
States (FRUS) series.

We have a new understanding about the evolution and uses of FRUS in the 19th century. Periodic executive branch releases to
congress predated the advent of formal FRUS volumes by
several decades, based on a longstanding mutual agreement that certain documents
could be withheld if the executive believed it necessary to protect national
security. We now know that in addition to the FRUS
volumes that began regular publication in 1861, the State Department submitted
to congress additional records that doubled the total number of documents
released. FRUS volumes also played an important role in
Department operations, serving as an “active file” of important issues and as a
policy guide to U.S. diplomats. And we now know that highly-experienced
Department staff compiled the volumes with care, expertise, and rational
selection criteria.

In the twentieth century the release of FRUS volumes
presented increasingly thorny declassification problems. As America’s role on
the world stage became more prominent, calculations about what information was
safe to release changed dramatically. FRUS became, and
remains, a crucial declassification outlet for government documents. On several
occasions, we have discovered, the continued existence of the series was in
jeopardy. But in every instance FRUS not only survived,
but also often emerged with a renewed mandate to disseminate vital foreign
policy information to elected officials and the public. In a few cases those
revelations caused some short-term consternation among diplomats, policy makers,
or allies. Overall, however, sharing key documents about how past decisions were
made and implemented has not only proved illuminating for politicians and the
public, but also exemplified how Americans value governmental transparency.

We now see that the Foreign Relations of the United States
series represents an important negotiation vehicle through which to debate the
balance between the need to know and the need to protect. FRUS acknowledges United States foreign policy decisions to Americans
and the world, formally and officially. What secrets should the U.S. government
keep from its own citizens, and for how long? How does a democracy function in
an information-restricted environment? There are no permanent answers to those
questions—they must be reconsidered regularly in light of current circumstances
and the longstanding desire for Americans to have the most open government
possible. We may never be fully satisfied with the answers, but constantly
reconsidering such questions is vital, and FRUS plays a
crucial part in that national conversation.

Most importantly, we have learned that both specialists and the general public
are interested in the issues raised by our in-depth study of FRUS. Although our “official” commemorations of the 150th birthday of
the series end with the Williams College
conference in March 2012, we intend to continue our investigations and
share our findings with you. Specifically, we are writing a book-length
manuscript encompassing not only the last 150 years, but also the significant
pre-1861 story of Americans’ debate about the value, and values, of openness.
When the research, writing, editing, and peer review is complete, we will
publish a book of interest to both academics and a wider audience. We are also
compiling substantial appendices to the book that will list the hundreds of
releases of documents to congress in addition formal FRUS
volumes, totaling thousands of pages in the 19th century. We believe a fuller
accounting of the formal communications between the executive and legislative
branches concerning foreign policy will enrich the work of those interested in a
variety of topics. Finally, we intend to make presentations across the country
about our findings and advance the conversation about the significance they hold
for issues confronting Americans in the 21st century. We will use this website
to provide updates, so watch this space for announcements about our future
activities.